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rondocap

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 18, 2011
542
341
Barefeats has some 6900XT numbers, and appears to be twice as fast as the Vega ii, currently.
imagine dual w6900x mpx modules - hopefully apple has that in the pipeline.
 
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DFP1989

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2020
462
361
Melbourne, Australia
Seems to be very stable in my 7,1 so far, and works perfectly with Bootcamp too. Haven’t needed to disable the W5700X in Win10 either.

B48D0803-2A85-41A2-9F0D-0811448D6534.jpeg
 

chfilm

macrumors 68040
Nov 15, 2012
3,427
2,110
Berlin
finally :) its gonna be interesting when this will be fully supported with good drivers etc.. i have two vegas II and am super happy, but of course more performance is always great. Probably giving up the link between the two cards will be easily compensated by the raw power of the new generation?
 

sn1p3r845

macrumors regular
Feb 9, 2012
216
108
Vancouver, BC
I hope Apple hurries up and gives the Mac Pro a spec refresh or a price reduction before they do the m1 versions so I can finally pick one up
 

deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,493
4,053
I hope Apple hurries up and gives the Mac Pro a spec refresh or a price reduction before they do the m1 versions so I can finally pick one up

Price reduction? They went 4+ years on the MP 2013 with no price reduction. I wouldn't hold my breath.
Spec refresh ... these off the shelf GPU cards appear to work just fine with the proper drivers provider. Apple doesn't have a deep need to do new hardware over next 12+ months. And given the GPU chip shortage ... where are they going to get supply from anyway. ( Apple is going to pay more money to outbid all of AMD's other customers to get them? I wouldn't hold my breath on that either. e.g., Apple bought bulk Vega 20 (Vega II) at the mid-tail end of lifecycle , not when they were scarce and in super high demand. )

Even if Apple was going to swim upstream of the cyrptomining mania inflation pressures... it is far more likely that they would just throw the Apple tax on top of those higher market prices.


Finally, if Apple's primary Mac Pro target is a "half sized" ( much fewer slots) system then this off the self add in card will work just fine at the extreme top end for lots of users (especially the compute focused ones) . Whatever M-series SoC it has will very likely have an embedded GPU so do not necessarily need a MPX module to provision video streams to the Thunderbolt ports. Apple will probably have some MPX update for the M-series half sizsed Mac pro., but probaby not much to put major MPX module launch before that next system iteration is ready. The Intel Mac Pros likely will get "trickle down" on that release timeline, than on something independent.
 
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fuchsdh

macrumors 68020
Jun 19, 2014
2,028
1,831
I wouldn't be surprised if an AS Mac Pro didn't support traditional graphics cards, and Apple released their own accelerators similar to the Afterburner card. That way they can optimise them to suit their apps/workflows/partners.
Not that I think that's a crazy sentiment or something Apple wouldn't do, but A) the major "secret sauce" with the AS SOC is the integrated memory and graphics. If you're going to an external solution for graphics at that point, why not just use the existing standards you've got? B) They already made the MPX modules to offer a graphics solution that allows off-the-shelf GPUs, while also enabling higher-perf, "nicer" GPU solutions for them.

It just seems weird given that the 7,1 was clearly started at a point where Apple knew they were going to switch to Apple Silicon that they would spend all this time on MPX modules when they intended to ditch it after 2 or 3 years, max.

(Also, they haven't done anything else with the Afterburner card, but there's nothing stopping them from reprogramming them for further tasks. Again, it'd be weird for them to produce this novelty card they didn't intend to be compatible with future machines.)

The iMac Pro ending up a one-hit wonder makes sense, given how its role as the top-end Mac was changed in 2017 with the announcement the Mac Pro would be returning. The Mac Pro under Apple Silicon being completely, entirely different doesn't make as much sense to me, especially since it's purposefully designed to be very different than the rest of the lineup (modular, expandable.) It'll be interesting to see how the rumors pan out.
 

MisterAndrew

macrumors 68030
Sep 15, 2015
2,895
2,390
Portland, Ore.
We can see in the other thread that it's not a compute oriented GPU, so for heavily compute dependent tasks the best GPU would be a Pro VII (the PC workstation version) which has 1/4 double precision (FP64) performance, so 6.5 TFLOPs. The 6900 XT has 1/16 FP64 performance, so 1.44 TFLOPs. That's still better than the Vega II MPX which achieves 880.6 GFLOPs. It's interesting that the D700 in the 6,1 is also 1/4 like the Pro VII so it achieves 870.4 GFLOPs.
 

deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,493
4,053
I wouldn't be surprised if an AS Mac Pro didn't support traditional graphics cards, and Apple released their own accelerators similar to the Afterburner card. That way they can optimise them to suit their apps/workflows/partners.

Essentially go back to the Mac Pro 2013 baseline design? Errr, probably not.

First, the Afterburner card fits into any of the 3 x16 slots in a Mac Pro 2019. If it fits into a "normal" slot, so can all of the other cards that fit into a normal slot. ( also need drivers. Apple isn't blocking drivers that follow their rules and roadmaps. ). The Afterburner card does not preclude in any way some 3rd party FPGA card from being inserted into the MP 2019. If there was a driver for it, it would work.

Afterburner doesn't work all that great as an "accelerator" in a external PCI-e box ( eGPU) whereas can add horsepower to lots of x86 Mac laptops and iMacs with a driver supported , off-the-shelf card. If the tansitor budget gets big enough "ProRes RAW" fixed function logic could easier find its way into the Apple Silicon in 1-2 future generations. ( Apple specific stuff is just as least as likely to land inside a future SoC than outside. Outside in Afterburner made lots of sense because ProRes RAW was entangled during the development with Red Patent legal drama. FPGA allowed them large flexibility in dealing with whatever the outcome was on the short-intermediate term. )


Second, simply just go back to the intro for the MP 2019 where Apple bragged about :

i. having the most Pro Tools HDX cards in a single box/system.
ii. the M.2 SSD PCI-e cards you could put into the system.


Can try to paint this into just simply being a Final Cut Pro box , but that isn't necessarily the majority of the target market. Apple is only likely going to to 10GbE. There are 40-100+ GbE networks out there to interface with.
Some folks have relatively extremely fast storage I/O needs.

It isn't only about GPU cards. Apple is extremely unlikely to "cover' the whole GPU performance range. They are even more unlikely going to try to cover the entire PCI-e add-in-card landscape.

Once there are 1-2 other "normal" PCI-e slots presents it isn't a huge leap to have a MPX enabled slot there in addition. One MPX bay ( with two slots; one with an MPX connector ) and perhaps one other "normal" single width slot would cut the system height ( in tower format ) down within the ball park of half ( if prune a small bit out the CPU area. ) . Would have at least 3 slots and at least one double wide one. All need is the optional power connectors (which doesn't cost much in terms of design) and to enable the GPU drivers ( which is the bigger missing piece at the moment).

For a full (present) height of the Mac Pro the bulks of the height is the standard slots. If keeping the height might as well keep the slots.


The major difference with Apple Silicon is two fold.

One, Apple security model for the kernel has changes and right now it is simpler if only Apple GPU drivers are in a Apple kernel. ( if Apple doesn't start to open door at WWDC 2021 with macOS 12 kernel and IO driver stack changes then can start to put on the "doom and gloom" for 3rd party GPUs. ).


Two, Apple is trying to get folks to highly optimize for their specific GPUs. That is much easier to do when there are no other options on the table.

Once Apple gets to point of 90+ % of all new Macs sold have Apple embedded GPUs in them the inertia will take care of #2. Apple won't have to "herd" folks in that direction; market forces will do it. Of the gate though the installed base of Mac on x86 with Intel/AMD GPUs greatly outnumbered the M1 install base.


Apple probably does want to wipe all 3rd party GPUs from inside all of the laptop line up and the lower part of the desktop line up. But it seems doubtful that they will want to go toe-to-toe with the top end of the discrete card market. This 6800Xt shows some 2x improvements they'd have to cover. Today there are some rumors floating around how the top end Navi 31 will be more than a 2x improvement over that in late 2022. 400W budget and $2,000-6,000 money budget is going to 'buy' bleeding edge performance that Apple would 'have to' cover is artificially block all 3rd party options.

I suspect Apple just wants to keep the profitable GPU part and leave the low volume parts to other player. ( and likewise apple probably won't go into the ultimate "core count" war with AMD/Intel/Ampere etc. on CPU cores either with the Mac Pro).
 

DFP1989

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2020
462
361
Melbourne, Australia
The Mac Pro under Apple Silicon being completely, entirely different doesn't make as much sense to me, especially since it's purposefully designed to be very different than the rest of the lineup (modular, expandable.) It'll be interesting to see how the rumors pan out.
The Mac Pro hasn’t always been modular and expandable, the 6,1 went without updates for its entire run and has no internal expansion.

The 7,1 is the outlier in Apple’s releases over the past few years, the rest are barely upgradable/expandable after purchase, outside of external Thunderbolt devices.
 

DFP1989

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2020
462
361
Melbourne, Australia
Second, simply just go back to the intro for the MP 2019 where Apple bragged about :

i. having the most Pro Tools HDX cards in a single box/system.
ii. the M.2 SSD PCI-e cards you could put into the system.
Of course Apple was going to brag about the benefits of a new product, just as they extolled the virtues of the new M1 Macs at the expense of their entire Intel lineup.
 

elfamosisimoJON

macrumors member
Jan 9, 2019
66
57
We can see in the other thread that it's not a compute oriented GPU, so for heavily compute dependent tasks the best GPU would be a Pro VII (the PC workstation version) which has 1/4 double precision (FP64) performance, so 6.5 TFLOPs. The 6900 XT has 1/16 FP64 performance, so 1.44 TFLOPs. That's still better than the Vega II MPX which achieves 880.6 GFLOPs. It's interesting that the D700 in the 6,1 is also 1/4 like the Pro VII so it achieves 870.4 GFLOPs.
thats just numbers, even if its gaming oriented, so far in the first beta it destroys the vega II and Pro VII in real world work
 
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fuchsdh

macrumors 68020
Jun 19, 2014
2,028
1,831
The Mac Pro hasn’t always been modular and expandable, the 6,1 went without updates for its entire run and has no internal expansion.

The 7,1 is the outlier in Apple’s releases over the past few years, the rest are barely upgradable/expandable after purchase, outside of external Thunderbolt devices.
Yeah, but they fessed up that the 6,1 didn't work for a lot of customers. If the issue had only been the "thermal corner" they could have released a similar smaller-unit, external expansion successor. Instead they went back to the slotbox model—and not just that, but they went to a higher-end workstation platform, instead of the midrange tower the Mac Pro had been previously.

Don't get me wrong, if Apple had iterated on the 6,1, put their money where their mouth was on GPU acceleration, or at the bare minimum updated the thing they probably would have dragged many kicking and screaming along with them (I was sitting around waiting for a Broadwell version of the tube Mac Pro to buy one... and then they never came out with it, so I just upgraded my 3,1 to a 5,1.) But they consciously chose to make a very different pivot.

We obviously don't know what the pro Mac range is going to look like on Apple Silicon right now. But to me it doesn't make sense to commit all the time and resources to a very different form factor and in the very next revision go back to the pro Mac format that has burned you not once, but twice in the past 20 years.
 

rondocap

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 18, 2011
542
341
The W6800 amd gpu with 32gb of vram is starting to get leaked in its normal pc version, looks promising - hopefully an mpx module is next
 

deconstruct60

macrumors G5
Mar 10, 2009
12,493
4,053
Of course Apple was going to brag about the benefits of a new product, just as they extolled the virtues of the new M1 Macs at the expense of their entire Intel lineup.

It isn't primarily about the benefits of having "a card". it was the types of cards they were highlighting. Mostly high bandwidth , performance cards ( or lots of low bandwidth, but "princess and the pea" low latency Audio cards in larger numbers. ) .

That was basically saying that Thunderbolt as a panacea for expansion. ( it works for some but not the whole ecosystem.). Apple trying to "eat" the whole ecosystem of possible cards wasn't even their objective when they put forward Thunderbolt as a panacea. They didn't want to implement everything for everyone there either. Even in the non-GPU MPX space... Apple didn't do the Pegasus storage module either. So Apple being maniacs about putting their labels on the most add-in-modules. They didn't do it before or after the MP 2013 and 2019 transitions.


Afterburner is likely not a trend to building large ecosystem of cards. Apple A14 picked up ability to do comfortably do Apple ProRAW for still photos. If Apple picks up another iteration of SSD capacity density improvements and gets a bigger transistor budget for the SoC's, then ProRes RAW en/decoding fixed function logic will probably come also.

When the Apple comes up with the next iteration on the Mac Pro it will probably have a M-series SoC in it. And that SoC is extremely likely going to have a GPU inside the SoC. IMHO that would be the full limit of the available GPU options. However, it is likely the one that Apple will through the most effort/work/resources at. In that context, the MPX GPU module would be whatever

As the transistor budgets get bigger over time, Apple will most likely try to "eat" the GPU and video accelerator cards markets with the SoC (and soldered to the motherboard) rather than any add-in-card/module. They would cover everything but it will be more than they have traditionally left open in the Mac Pro type of space. ( e.g. no 'low end , entry' MPX module ,but probably iterate slowly on the very high end , top performance module that using multiple dies for GPU performance coverage that Apple just won't chase do to high mismatch with the laptop/mobile focus for baseline SoC. )
 
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